Fastnet Rock
Encyclopedia
Fastnet Rock is a small island in the Atlantic Ocean
and the most southerly point of Ireland
. It lies 6.5 kilometres (4 mi) southwest of Cape Clear Island and 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) from County Cork
on the Irish mainland. Due to its location, Fastnet was known as 'Ireland's Teardrop' because it was the last part of the country that Irish emigrants would see as they sailed to the United States
in the 19th century.
Fastnet Rock is a small clay
-slate
islet
with quartz
veins. It rises to about 30 metres (98.4 ft) above low water mark and is separated from the much smaller southern Little Fastnet by a 10 metres (32.8 ft) wide channel. Fastnet also gives its name to the sea area used by the Shipping Forecast
s on BBC
's Radio 4
.
Fastnet Rock is used as the midpoint of one of the world's classic offshore yacht
ing races, the Fastnet Race
, a 1126 kilometres (699.7 mi) round trip from Cowes
, UK round the rock and back to Plymouth
. It is also used occasionally as a mark for yacht races from local sailing centres such as Schull
and Baltimore
.
is the second to be built on the rock and the highest in Ireland.
Construction of the first one started in 1853, and it first produced a light on 1 January 1854. The lighthouse replaced an early one built on Cape Clear Island in 1818, partly motivated by the loss of an American sailing packet
, Stephen Whitney
, in thick fog
during November 1847 on nearby West Calf Island causing the death of 92 of her 110 passengers and crew. The new lighthouse was constructed of cast iron
with an inner lining of brick
and was designed by George Halpin. Costing £17,390, the tower was 63 feet 9 inches (19.4 m) high with a 27 feet 8 inch (8.4 m) high lantern structure on top, giving a total height of around 91 feet (27.7 m). It had an oil burning lamp of 38 kilocandelas
; in contrast modern lighthouses typically produce 1,300 kilocandelas. In 1883 an explosive fog signal was installed, which electrically detonated a small charge of guncotton every five minutes in fog.
The tower proved to be too weak, since gales shook it to the point that crockery was sometimes thrown off tables, and a 60 imperial gallon (273 L) cask of water lashed to the gallery 133 feet (40.5 m) above high water was washed away. Various steps were taken to strengthen the tower, including fitting a casing around the bottom section up to the second floor and filling it with stone, and the surrounding rock smoothed over. In 1865 the lower floors were filled in with solid material.
had resolved that the light was not sufficiently powerful, particularly for the first landfall for many ships crossing the Atlantic. The replacement was constructed of stone, cast iron now being considered unsatisfactory — the whole of the nearby Calf tower above its strengthening casing had been carried away during a gale on 27 November 1881, although without loss of life. On the same day, the sea had broken the glass of the Fastnet Rock lantern.
The new lighthouse was designed by William Douglass
and built under the supervision of James Kavanagh. Construction started in 1897 with the levelling of the site, and the first of 2,047 Cornish
granite
dovetailed blocks was laid in June 1899. As well as these blocks, weighing 4300 tons in total and with a volume of 58,093 cubic feet (1645 m³), a further 4100 cubic feet (116 m³) of granite was used to fill the inside of the tower up to the level of the entrance floor 58 feet (17.7 m) above high water mark. A small steamship, the Ierne, was specially constructed for carrying the blocks out to the island, and Kavenagh personally set every stone, which weighed between 1.75 and 3 tons. The new lighthouse entered service on 27 June 1904 having cost nearly £90,000.
The masonry tower is 146 feet (44.5 m) high, with the focal point of the light 159 feet (48.5 m) above high water mark. The base of the lighthouse is 52 feet (15.8 m) in diameter with the first course of stone 6 inches (150 mm) below high-water mark, and the first ten of the 89 courses built into the rock. The first floor of the original tower remains, on the highest part of the rock, having been left when it was demolished and converted into an oil store.
The fog signal was changed to one report every three minutes in 1934 and from 1965 accompanied by a brilliant flash when operated during darkness. The original vaporised paraffin
light was replaced with an electric one on 10 May 1969. At the end of March 1989 the lighthouse was converted to automatic operation. It is monitored and controlled using a UHF
telemetry link to Mizen Head
Lighthouse and onwards by landline to the control centre at Dún Laoghaire
.
It produces a 0.14 second long white flash every five seconds, with a nominal range of 27 nautical miles (50 km) and power of 2,500 kilocandelas. Since April 1978 in addition to being operated during darkness, the light is also used during poor visibility when the fog signal is sounding. The explosive fog signal was replaced with an electric fog horn in 1974 which produces 4 blasts every minute at 300 hertz
with a nominal range of 3.9 nautical miles (7 km). The Racon
—radar
transponder
beacon—has been a morse
G on the radar display since its installation in 1994.
In 1985, the lighthouse was struck by a rogue wave measuring about 48m in height.
In the Summer months a Cape Clear based ferry runs trips around the rock from Baltimore and Cape Clear.
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
and the most southerly point of Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
. It lies 6.5 kilometres (4 mi) southwest of Cape Clear Island and 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) from County Cork
County Cork
County Cork is a county in Ireland. It is located in the South-West Region and is also part of the province of Munster. It is named after the city of Cork . Cork County Council is the local authority for the county...
on the Irish mainland. Due to its location, Fastnet was known as 'Ireland's Teardrop' because it was the last part of the country that Irish emigrants would see as they sailed to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in the 19th century.
Fastnet Rock is a small clay
Clay
Clay is a general term including many combinations of one or more clay minerals with traces of metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are mostly composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure.- Formation :Clay minerals...
-slate
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...
islet
Islet
An islet is a very small island.- Types :As suggested by its origin as islette, an Old French diminutive of "isle", use of the term implies small size, but little attention is given to drawing an upper limit on its applicability....
with quartz
Quartz
Quartz is the second-most-abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz,...
veins. It rises to about 30 metres (98.4 ft) above low water mark and is separated from the much smaller southern Little Fastnet by a 10 metres (32.8 ft) wide channel. Fastnet also gives its name to the sea area used by the Shipping Forecast
Shipping Forecast
The Shipping Forecast is a four-times-daily BBC Radio broadcast of weather reports and forecasts for the seas around the coasts of the British Isles. It is produced by the Met Office and broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. The forecasts sent over the Navtex...
s on BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
.
Fastnet Rock is used as the midpoint of one of the world's classic offshore yacht
Yacht
A yacht is a recreational boat or ship. The term originated from the Dutch Jacht meaning "hunt". It was originally defined as a light fast sailing vessel used by the Dutch navy to pursue pirates and other transgressors around and into the shallow waters of the Low Countries...
ing races, the Fastnet Race
Fastnet race
The Fastnet Race is a famous offshore yachting race. It is considered one of the classic offshore races. It takes place every two years over a course of . The race starts off Cowes on the Isle of Wight in England, rounds the Fastnet Rock off the southwest coast of Ireland and then finishes at...
, a 1126 kilometres (699.7 mi) round trip from Cowes
Cowes
Cowes is an English seaport town and civil parish on the Isle of Wight. Cowes is located on the west bank of the estuary of the River Medina facing the smaller town of East Cowes on the east Bank...
, UK round the rock and back to Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
. It is also used occasionally as a mark for yacht races from local sailing centres such as Schull
Schull
Schull or Skull is a town in County Cork, Ireland. The name derives from a medieval monastic school of which no trace remains. Located on the southwest coast, in West Cork, the village is situated in a scenic and remote location, dominated by Mount Gabriel . It has a sheltered harbour, used for...
and Baltimore
Baltimore, County Cork
Baltimore is located in western County Cork, Ireland. Baltimore is the principal village of the parish of Rath and the Islands, the southernmost parish in Ireland...
.
First lighthouse
The current lighthouseLighthouse
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire, and used as an aid to navigation for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways....
is the second to be built on the rock and the highest in Ireland.
Construction of the first one started in 1853, and it first produced a light on 1 January 1854. The lighthouse replaced an early one built on Cape Clear Island in 1818, partly motivated by the loss of an American sailing packet
Packet trade
Packet trade generally refers to any regularly scheduled cargo, passenger and mail trade conducted by ship. The ships are called "packet boats" as their original function was to carry mail.-United States:...
, Stephen Whitney
Stephen Whitney (ship)
The Stephen Whitney was a passenger carrying sailing ship which was wrecked on West Calf Island off the southern coast of Ireland on 10 November 1847 with the loss of 92 of the 110 passengers and crew aboard. She was a packet ship in Robert Kermit's Red Star Line...
, in thick fog
Fog
Fog is a collection of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. While fog is a type of stratus cloud, the term "fog" is typically distinguished from the more generic term "cloud" in that fog is low-lying, and the moisture in the fog is often generated...
during November 1847 on nearby West Calf Island causing the death of 92 of her 110 passengers and crew. The new lighthouse was constructed of cast iron
Cast iron
Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...
with an inner lining of brick
Brick
A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...
and was designed by George Halpin. Costing £17,390, the tower was 63 feet 9 inches (19.4 m) high with a 27 feet 8 inch (8.4 m) high lantern structure on top, giving a total height of around 91 feet (27.7 m). It had an oil burning lamp of 38 kilocandelas
Candela
The candela is the SI base unit of luminous intensity; that is, power emitted by a light source in a particular direction, weighted by the luminosity function . A common candle emits light with a luminous intensity of roughly one candela...
; in contrast modern lighthouses typically produce 1,300 kilocandelas. In 1883 an explosive fog signal was installed, which electrically detonated a small charge of guncotton every five minutes in fog.
The tower proved to be too weak, since gales shook it to the point that crockery was sometimes thrown off tables, and a 60 imperial gallon (273 L) cask of water lashed to the gallery 133 feet (40.5 m) above high water was washed away. Various steps were taken to strengthen the tower, including fitting a casing around the bottom section up to the second floor and filling it with stone, and the surrounding rock smoothed over. In 1865 the lower floors were filled in with solid material.
Second lighthouse
In 1891 the Commissioners of Irish LightsCommissioners of Irish Lights
The Commissioners of Irish Lights is the body that serves as the lighthouse authority for Ireland plus its adjacent seas and islands...
had resolved that the light was not sufficiently powerful, particularly for the first landfall for many ships crossing the Atlantic. The replacement was constructed of stone, cast iron now being considered unsatisfactory — the whole of the nearby Calf tower above its strengthening casing had been carried away during a gale on 27 November 1881, although without loss of life. On the same day, the sea had broken the glass of the Fastnet Rock lantern.
The new lighthouse was designed by William Douglass
William Douglass (engineer)
William Tregarthen Douglass was the Chief Engineer for the Commissioners of Irish Lights in the late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. He is responsible for a number of their designs of lighthouses and associated structures. He was a consulting engineer for lighthouse construction for...
and built under the supervision of James Kavanagh. Construction started in 1897 with the levelling of the site, and the first of 2,047 Cornish
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
dovetailed blocks was laid in June 1899. As well as these blocks, weighing 4300 tons in total and with a volume of 58,093 cubic feet (1645 m³), a further 4100 cubic feet (116 m³) of granite was used to fill the inside of the tower up to the level of the entrance floor 58 feet (17.7 m) above high water mark. A small steamship, the Ierne, was specially constructed for carrying the blocks out to the island, and Kavenagh personally set every stone, which weighed between 1.75 and 3 tons. The new lighthouse entered service on 27 June 1904 having cost nearly £90,000.
The masonry tower is 146 feet (44.5 m) high, with the focal point of the light 159 feet (48.5 m) above high water mark. The base of the lighthouse is 52 feet (15.8 m) in diameter with the first course of stone 6 inches (150 mm) below high-water mark, and the first ten of the 89 courses built into the rock. The first floor of the original tower remains, on the highest part of the rock, having been left when it was demolished and converted into an oil store.
The fog signal was changed to one report every three minutes in 1934 and from 1965 accompanied by a brilliant flash when operated during darkness. The original vaporised paraffin
Paraffin
In chemistry, paraffin is a term that can be used synonymously with "alkane", indicating hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH2n+2. Paraffin wax refers to a mixture of alkanes that falls within the 20 ≤ n ≤ 40 range; they are found in the solid state at room temperature and begin to enter the...
light was replaced with an electric one on 10 May 1969. At the end of March 1989 the lighthouse was converted to automatic operation. It is monitored and controlled using a UHF
Ultra high frequency
Ultra-High Frequency designates the ITU Radio frequency range of electromagnetic waves between 300 MHz and 3 GHz , also known as the decimetre band or decimetre wave as the wavelengths range from one to ten decimetres...
telemetry link to Mizen Head
Mizen Head
Mizen Head , is located at the extremity of a peninsula in the district of Carbery in County Cork, Ireland. It is one of the extreme points of the island of Ireland and is a major tourist attraction, noted for its dramatic cliff scenery...
Lighthouse and onwards by landline to the control centre at Dún Laoghaire
Dún Laoghaire
Dún Laoghaire or Dún Laoire , sometimes anglicised as "Dunleary" , is a suburban seaside town in County Dublin, Ireland, about twelve kilometres south of Dublin city centre. It is the county town of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County and a major port of entry from Great Britain...
.
It produces a 0.14 second long white flash every five seconds, with a nominal range of 27 nautical miles (50 km) and power of 2,500 kilocandelas. Since April 1978 in addition to being operated during darkness, the light is also used during poor visibility when the fog signal is sounding. The explosive fog signal was replaced with an electric fog horn in 1974 which produces 4 blasts every minute at 300 hertz
Hertz
The hertz is the SI unit of frequency defined as the number of cycles per second of a periodic phenomenon. One of its most common uses is the description of the sine wave, particularly those used in radio and audio applications....
with a nominal range of 3.9 nautical miles (7 km). The Racon
Racon
A racon is a radar transponder commonly used to mark maritime navigational hazards. The word is a portmanteau of RAdar and beaCON.When a racon receives a radar pulse, it responds with a signal on the same frequency which puts an image on the radar display...
—radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
transponder
Transponder
In telecommunication, the term transponder has the following meanings:...
beacon—has been a morse
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
G on the radar display since its installation in 1994.
In 1985, the lighthouse was struck by a rogue wave measuring about 48m in height.
In the Summer months a Cape Clear based ferry runs trips around the rock from Baltimore and Cape Clear.
See also
- Fastnet raceFastnet raceThe Fastnet Race is a famous offshore yachting race. It is considered one of the classic offshore races. It takes place every two years over a course of . The race starts off Cowes on the Isle of Wight in England, rounds the Fastnet Rock off the southwest coast of Ireland and then finishes at...
- a biannual ocean yacht race from the Isle of Wight to Fastnet and then back to Plymouth.
Sources
- Morrissey, James (2005). A History of Fastnet Lighthouse. Columbia Press. ISBN 9780951282663
- The Fastnet Lighthouse: Light on a lonely rock, The Economist 18 Dec. 2008
- C.W. Scott, History of Fastnet Lighthouses, Schull Books 2001
- R. Coates, 'Fastnet', Nomina 20 (1997), pp. 37-46
- Fastnet Lighthouse Vital Statistics
- Pictures of the lighthouse
- Mizen Head Signal Station
- 9/28/1907;Fastnet Rock Lighthouses As Seen From Ooean Liners